THE NEW WORLD DISORDER

Horsemeat for dinner: Globalism under fire

Scandal throws gasoline on Britain's already incandescent rage at EU

Published: 02/11/2013 at 8:37 AM

(FORBES) The horsemeat discovered on British dinner tables last week was (1) supplied by a Swedish frozen foods marketer that had (2) outsourced meal preparation to a French company that (3) operates a factory in Luxembourg that (4) uses meat imported, (5) via a Dutch agent, (6) from Romania. At least that is the BBC’s version of the byzantine sequence (other versions differ in minor details). What is clear is that the affair has thrown another tanker-load of gasoline on the British people’s already incandescent rage at the European Union (EU) and its role in undermining their sovereignty.

Although the American press has been slow to sense the historic significance of recent events in the UK, British exasperation with the EU has the potential to shake the latter-day world order. A symptom of the strains is that the UK’s pro-EU Prime Minister, David Cameron, has felt obliged to promise the British electorate a straight in-out referendum on British membership of the EU. Cameron probably doesn’t realize it yet but he may just have touched off a geopolitical avalanche.